From Greenie Watch, who is in hospital today, get well quick, miss your input already….

German Chancellor Fires Green Energy Minister

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has sacked her environment minister, Norbert Roettgen, days after he led her party to a crushing defeat in a key regional election.

Mr Roettgen was the candidate of Ms Merkel’s Christian Democrats for the post of state premier in North-Rhine Westphalia.

He was widely blamed for the party’s heavy defeat to the Social Democrats.

The loss was seen as a serious blow to Ms Merkel’s government.

She told a hastily arranged news conference on Wednesday that Mr Roettgen had been dismissed “to allow a change in personnel”.

He was replaced by Peter Altmaier, the Christian Democrats’ leader in the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag.

Mr Roettgen provoked controversy early in the North-Rhine Westphalia campaign by refusing to commit to giving up his job as national environment minister and becoming full-time opposition leader in the state if he lost.

In unusually strongly worded remarks, Horst Seehofer, the head of the Christian Democrats’ powerful sister party in Bavaria, the Christian Social Union, accused Mr Roettgen of having made a “very serious mistake”.

Pointing out that Mr Roettgen had started the campaign three percentage points ahead in the polls, Mr Seehofer said he was astonished that the lead had “melted away like a bowl of ice cream in the sun”.

His remarks on Monday to broadcaster ZDF caused a sensation in the German media.

Support for the Christian Democrats dropped from 35% to 26% in Sunday’s North-Rhine Westphalia election. It was the party’s worst result in the state.

The FDP, the CDU’s national coalition partner, performed better than expected, increasing their vote by nearly two percentage points and thereby giving the lie to speculation that they might fail to win seats.

A recent study estimates that the Germans will soon have to reckon with dramatic price rises in their electricity bills. According to the study, electricity cost for households will doubled in ten years. The rising costs are due to the expansion of renewable energy as well as the necessary grid expansion and the subsidisation of solar and wind power.

Electricity prices in Germany will rise by 70 percent by the year 2025 according to a study.

The costs are due to the green energy transition and the planned phase out of nuclear power, according to a new report by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). The study was commissioned by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Baden-Wuerttemberg.

The experts see this as a threat to Germany’s economy: “If electricity prices are rising so dramatically, we have concerns about the competitiveness of German companies,” said Chamber of Commerce and Industry President Bernd Bechtold.

The price increases were calculated for large customer contracts according to the study. “For households, prices are expected to increase even more because they cannot negotiate such high discounts,” said engineer Karl-Friedrich Ziegahn, who coordinated the study.

German power prices highest in the EU

The rising costs are due to the expansion of renewable energy as well as the necessary grid expansion and the subsidization of solar and wind power. In early May, a study by energy experts at McKinsey suggested that electricity consumers would face 21.5 billion Euros in costs in 2020 caused by the transition to renewable energy.

“We already have the highest electricity prices in the EU today,” said Bechtold. In France, the cost of electricity is about 40 percent lower.

The German industry could not afford such a price difference in the long run.